Today both film fans and aficionados of cinema consider the director to be the so called author of a movie . Interesting to note that when a film is promoted a star name director is heavily promoted as in " A film by Steven Spielberg / Martin Scorsese / James Cameron etc etc " . Much of this comes from the French New Wave era where the director was considered to be the artistic driving force behind a movie conveniently forgetting all about the hard work the screenwriter has in the production . Perhaps the theory of the director being the author of the film would be better applied to the birth of cinema where the likes of Georges Melies and the Lumiere brothers where the magical creativity of a director made a movie work ? Add J. Searle Dawley's 1910 version of FRANKENSTEIN to this body of work
Like many movies from this period there is a very strong element of literal movie magic brought in to play . Frankenstein tries to create a perfect human and the audience see a skeletal figure gradually becoming more and more formed . It's difficult to understand how the audience would have reacted to this in 1910 but even today the creation of the monster isn't totally unimpressive though sharp eyed viewers will notice the smoke in the chamber seems to flow in to the creation which indicates the trick is done via stop frame animation and the film being played backwards
Unfortunately the screen writing rule of " Show don't tell " seems to remain undiscovered from this period . We're told via card captions that Frankenstein hasn't created a perfect human but " The evil in his mind has made a monster " which is strange because Frankenstein has done nothing evil on screen at this point , nor does he do anything evil in the remainder of the runtime . Strangely too that the monster doesn't do anything monstrous apart from turning up at his creator's wedding day uninvited . Supposedly this ties in with Mary Shelley's subtext that God's law has been broken because a mere human has created life out of death ? There's also a perplexing end where the monster effectively disappears in to thin air after seeing his reflection in the mirror
You have to understand however that in 1910 we're a very long way from The Classic Hollywood period when narrative storytelling and all its beauty such as structure , characterisation and of course dialogue hadn't been considered . In the silent period directors were something along the lines of magicians and J Searle Dawley does bring magic to the cinematic table in a film that is strangely compelling despite the flaws in the narrative
Like many movies from this period there is a very strong element of literal movie magic brought in to play . Frankenstein tries to create a perfect human and the audience see a skeletal figure gradually becoming more and more formed . It's difficult to understand how the audience would have reacted to this in 1910 but even today the creation of the monster isn't totally unimpressive though sharp eyed viewers will notice the smoke in the chamber seems to flow in to the creation which indicates the trick is done via stop frame animation and the film being played backwards
Unfortunately the screen writing rule of " Show don't tell " seems to remain undiscovered from this period . We're told via card captions that Frankenstein hasn't created a perfect human but " The evil in his mind has made a monster " which is strange because Frankenstein has done nothing evil on screen at this point , nor does he do anything evil in the remainder of the runtime . Strangely too that the monster doesn't do anything monstrous apart from turning up at his creator's wedding day uninvited . Supposedly this ties in with Mary Shelley's subtext that God's law has been broken because a mere human has created life out of death ? There's also a perplexing end where the monster effectively disappears in to thin air after seeing his reflection in the mirror
You have to understand however that in 1910 we're a very long way from The Classic Hollywood period when narrative storytelling and all its beauty such as structure , characterisation and of course dialogue hadn't been considered . In the silent period directors were something along the lines of magicians and J Searle Dawley does bring magic to the cinematic table in a film that is strangely compelling despite the flaws in the narrative